Girlie AGDee's College Search Thread

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by southbymidwest

Yup. Nowadays, not only are colleges looking at rate of acceptance, they are also looking at yields using some pretty clever algorithms. In other words, they want to show that they are some degree of selective (Oh look, we are tougher to get into than you thought, this makes us a hot and more desired school!) along with yields of those kids who are accepted (Oh look, we have an acceptance rate of 34%, and our yield is 97%-practically everyone we accept ends up coming to school here, yay us, we ARE a hot and desired school, US News will now give us a shout out!). So if the school figures that they might be a safety school for you, and they have a snowball's chance in hell to get you, according to the algorithm, they might not accept you, even if your credentials are quite a bit better than the average (Dude/dudette! You can do better than us! You're just toying with us! Bah!). Throw in KDCat's selection process "take the applications for the qualified kids and throw them down the stairs. The ones that land on the third step from the bottom get accepted" and yeah, no wonder kids are applying 8, 10, 12 places. Our high school counselor recommended seven at an absolute, absolute minimum.

Innnnnteresting....Do most public schools publish their standards, though? I know that Illinois pretty much said "if your rank is this, and your ACT score is this, you will be accepted". So, if Illinois was your safety school, and you had the numbers they said you should, you didn't need 3 safeties.